The present invention relates to an improvement in a wire processing method to prepare wires necessary for electric wiring by cutting off a predetermined length of a wire fed from a wire paying-out device, conveying the cut length of wire in a direction perpendicular to the axial direction of the paid-out wire and subjecting the wire end portions to various kinds of processing which include stripping of the wire ends and attachment of connectors.
A current trend in the art of wire harness production is rather to a small amount, many-kind production system than to a simple system based on quantity alone. In this connection, there is an increasing demand for a method and apparatus which, using a single wire processing device, performs, for example, crimping and pressing of different kinds of electric connectors on various standards and lengths of wires.
Such a demand may be met by a recently proposed automatic wire processing system (Japanese patent application Publication No. 51-136186) which includes a wire feeder for drawing, measuring and cutting a wire, pallet facing the wire feeder for reversing and gripping a cut length of wire in a hair-pin configuration and means for moving the pallet in a direction perpendicular to the axis of the wire. However, such a proposal still fails to process end portions of the wire in the pallet unless the wire is transferred completely with the pallet to the next station. The pallet holding the cut wire cannot advance to a farther station unless stripping of the wire ends, pressing of connectors on the uncovered wire ends and like procedures are completed. This can bring about a considerable production delay. Furthermore, it is inevitable that the wire feeder and pallet conveying means are complex in construction.
An object of the present invention is to provide a wire processing method which promotes high-speed and specific operations on wires such as measurement and cut-off and achieve many kind, small amount production by shortening a programming time for a lot change while eliminating mechanical adjustment caused by the programming. In order to achieve this objective, a method according to the invention includes the steps of causing wire clamp pawls on a reversing device to grip an end portion of a wire paid out from a wire feeder, reversing the wire by the reversing device in a direction opposite to the direction of wire feed, and allowing the wire feeder to supply a desired length of wire on a side of the wire opposite to one gripped by the clamp pawls.